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After they are rescued, Melissa buys herself a knife.
It isn’t a hunter’s knife, not even a dark dagger; it doesn’t look different than any that a barbeque aficionado who likes westerns would own. In fact, such men would think it is as girlish as a knife can be, as it looks like scissors in finer points, and can be opened by a good spin. The store clerk who side-eyed her all the time with her baseball cap and grunted, pointing out it’s called a butterfly knife; Melissa liked it because it shone in dark silver steel within every crevice.
She buys it.
She buys it on an impulse that lasts two hours in the store.
She buys it because she is scared.
She buys it because the steel feels cold. Because the edge of it feels familiar on her skin.
She buys it because it is a reminder, and at the same time, it is too pretty and decorative to have ever been linked with that place, with those people.
Her mom doesn’t think much about it, fretting and scolding her in equal amounts after getting her back. They are waiting for the blessed money of the plane crash settlement, something that Melissa didn't expect and honestly doesn't see the point of it, but she testifies and sees the other girls across the halls. She cannot hold back the tremors that invade her body, as she walks into the courtroom hand in hand with her father, all dressed up in alike too-big suits. On the breast pocket, the weight of the complex blade brings some sort of relief, who’s gonna pat down some little girl, skin and bones, just getting back to civilization.
It is not like she planned anything to put it to good or ill use. It just feels more real than the dress shoes and loose tie.
Her nervous chuckles recanting the mantra about scavaging, starvation, survival, prayers, and rescue are enough for the panel of experts assessing their mental state, but fail to convince the girls on the sidelines, as the scoffs and glares make it seem so.
Melissa’s heart beats like a drum of war, and by the time she is dismissed with the others, the only tether she has to this reality, so mundane and miraculous after those nineteen months, is that shiny knife, thumping at the same pace.
The blade has no real use, as many things they brought back from the Canadian wilderness do. The callouses on her hands and feet catch the soft clothes, perfume, and soap, making her nose itch as the fragrances are intense and artificial, her teeth bleed, and her stomach revolts while eating snacks.
The knife has no use, so it must be just to be looked at, nothing else, the shine of the steel that hasn’t been tested as a weapon of survival, nor as a tool of resentment. Melissa can gaze upon it for hours, blasting music in her ears as the blade reflects on the cynical lights of her room, as she takes off the small clothes (her parents never bought her new ones) and tips it to her navel.
And if the blades nicks her skin in a trick of gravity, if the cold metal kiss of it taints her too clean, too pale, too weak flesh, if the way she drips over her hard floor resembles the sound of a good hunt, and her room smells like the camp after a feast, who would know? And if she closes her eyes and imagines another hand guiding hers, tracing the path of the knife between her breasts, uncaringly slashing over her wrists, caressing her thighs alongside stretch marks, if she grunts as she reaches down with her fingers, the sharp tip so close it sends shivers as sweet as she delivered, who could tell?
Melissa takes notice that the edge doesn’t become dull afterwards, such is the quality of the material.
***
She learns about her death on the news, months after the first missing person report. On the streets, she gets lots of gossip and news, so the story isn’t as straight, ha, as she wanted it to be. Her parents helped, describing her arms and nightmares marring their post-rescue normal lives.
The woman with short, dirty blonde hair, who was found at the side of the road with her body half rotten by the weathering, was a welcome coincidence, never mind that Melissa never knew if her parents actually ID’d her or not; much was said about the case, and little was confirmed.
The past is in the past
is the past, she moves on as the others attempt to do, too. According to other dwellers, she got those eyes of ‘do not mess up with me’ necessary to survive, and still, she can trade it up for a steady job and a doubtful company.
Melissa says her boyfriend gave her the scars, half-truths and plenty lies, she covers them up with the scarce make-up techniques she knows, never once one to paint her face. It takes her a while to get on her feet, but she learns quickly and doesn't get recognized as others would, as some kept their names and location untouched by time and tragedy.
When she gets her first paycheck, she is unsure of what to do with it, the numbers almost meaningless as the feeble paper they represent. She stashes it, then decides in favor of a bank some of the nightworkers suggest it would not steal from her as much as others. Shared rent, new formal clothes, an upgrade on her looks, and she is left with enough cash to still buy herself a whole rotisserie chicken.
No better place to enjoy it than a corner of the park, in her old clothes and musky pink baseball cap, the knife at her hip, trusty friend she would carry onto the next stage of her life, a final feast served at the tip of the blade and eaten by hand and fangs.
“Whoa, someone is hungry,” a chirpy voice comes from the unused path Melissa steered away from when selecting her metaphorical tomb.
She swallows thickly, confident that no normal person would glance twice at her in this state, and so, when she answers, is closer to bark, to deter the young woman stepping all over the unkept grass, looking past Melissa despite clearly referring to her.
“Yeah, you don’t know the whole of it.”
The girl has a polite smile hung on her lips, better than most people’s grimaces while talking to bums, her eyes inspecting anywhere but Melissa, yet she nods as acknowledgement.
“Sorry, I was told I am rude.”
“You seem fine, for now,” Melissa tears another piece of her chicken, her blade cutting it up as smoothly as if it were butter
She chews loudly, and the girl doesn’t leave. “I’m glad, maybe I turned out fine despite my mom abandoning me for the mountains.”
Melissa clears her throat to mask the chuckle she gets, “Maybe you’re just a weirdo.” She grunts, lifting the chicken in her bare hands, knife dangling from her little finger. “Kinda busy here.”
“Yes, yes, I notice. Uhm, well appet—, I mean, bon appetite?”
“Sometimes I wish I were dead in the mountains,” Melissa rolls her eyes, she fakes some invisible itch at her back, so her shirt rides up and shows more scars, on her stomach, arms, by the corner of her neck. “Can I fucking help you?”
“Yes! Actually, “ suddenly she is stepping closer, almost crowding Melissa despite all the bodily language warnings she gave her.
Just as she reaches for a better grip on her knife, she holds up a plain notebook, full of dried plants taped on the pages.
“I believe you are sitting on a rare plant, it is considered a weed for most gardeners, but it is native to this area, and I have encountered it on my walks here, and if you were so kind—”
“So kind,” Melissa repeats, baffled, her hands are greasy and full, holding the chicken in one, the knife in the other. Her mind shortcuts, completely unsure if to strike her, she looks down, some weird-looking grass is trampled under her legs. “I can’t get up,” she mumbles, and the woman beams at her.
"No problem,” she exclaims, enthusiastically reaching for Melissa's forearms, her fingers don’t flinch as they encircle most of the gruesome scars, and Melissa is on her feet before understanding what’s happening. “Yes! These are the ones, thank you!”
Melissa stares at her as she digs furiously, yet cups the roots and leaves with utmost patience, a tiny plastic bag covers the dirt, and she measures the length of the plant before closing the notebook over it.
“Want some?” Melissa asks, extending a dripping leg, mostly intact, for her to take. “Shared joy tastes better.”
“Uhm, nope, I need to dry it immediately," the girl gets up, not bothering to dust off the knees of her wide jeans, but rather bends her knees slightly, a bow of courtesy misplaced as they are in this park. “But, I would take your name, though.”
“Uhm…”Melissa had her mouth full of white meat just a moment ago, skilfully gathering every shred of juicy tissue from the light bones. And now her tongue knots itself, coming up with an answer. She looks at the young woman, her eyes large, curious, and nice enough, no survival instinct whatsoever; she blurts out a name as friendly and innocuous as she finds her. “Kelly.”
“Nice to meet ya, I’m Alex, ” she answers sweetly, and runs off from where she came from, a quick puff of nonsensical youth not knowing the danger she could’ve been in.
“Huh,” Melissa, now Kelly, sits beside the upturned ground, tapping her knife on a cleaned-up bone, the one for good luck. “Her name sounds nice,” she speaks into the air, tasting it as she cleans the blade on her shirt.
***
She finds her again, not that she searches for her; it just happens they share a park. And the kid has no sense of self-awareness to keep herself away.
Alex wants to major in biology, with a minor in ancient agriculture or something like it. She names flowers like they are enchantments and always accepts the tassels of dried leaves Melissa finds near the bus stop.
Kelly, well, she wants to get on her feet, find something she really likes, work with her hands that never quite stay still; she is unsure if those skin ointments Alex brings her would help with the scarring, but she takes them either way because Alex gets giddy when she smells them on her.
Melissa finds herself having an issue, never one to protect anybody else other than herself, learnt that the hard way, she still justifies the friendship with a sense of duty. Lost weird college girl that cannot share all her knowledge with other academics because she has a bit of dark humor, even when she reassures her, she is not the worst one in that regard, child neglect has nothing on being left for death after a plane crash.
Kelly doesn’t tell her about that, not on Melissa’s plans to do so. They don’t mention the scars, even when Alex comes with a copper wire project about uprooted trees thriving against laws of nature. Even when Melissa etches on pieces of bark the specific type of tissue that grows over the xylem when the stem gets injured, to show her that she doesn’t get bored while she rambles on about her lab essays.
They exchange barbs and flashcards, Melissa bringing the best street food to revise over Alex’s syllabus, so at ease with the routine that she swears Alex got something wrong from the print place one day.
“What’s this?” Melissa shows the pamphlet she found, not a hint of green or beige that would signify it’s botany-related.
“Your knife, right?” Alex points it out with a dip of her head.
Melissa frowns, indeed it is a leaflet about the knife she carries around, but she hasn’t shown it to Alex ever since their first meeting.
The text explains its name, just as the vendor called it nearly a decade ago, the culture from where it comes, the Philippines, and the correct handling of the blade. Melissa grins and squirms over her stomach until she reaches the safe handle without dropping the bookbag on her lap.
She starts by flipping the blade open in a near identical motion to the tiny illustrations.
“Whoa.”
Melissa looks up at Alex, the shawarma she was eating forgotten in her hands, ecstatic focus on the blade she takes on short trips inside her pocket, these days a talisman she hasn’t failed to sharpen even when she has no reason to.
“Come on, that’s just easy.”
“Sure it is,” Alex giggles, and Melissa huffs some air, folding the paper to see the next manipulation.
Melissa ponders the weight in her hand, her fingers tracing the pivot and bite handle before applying little force, the movement making the knife spin and twirl over her hand just like a badass kung fu movie protagonist.
“God, you are so cool,” Alex sighs, and something in Melissa’s chest flutters.
“No, no, no–you are…you are the one that’s cool.” She laughs it off, adjusting her baseball cap so she can’t see the way her eyes catch the sunlight, a rich brown holding on to the mysteries of the whole plant world. “Imma show you, guys would dig this shit up.”
“Meh, I don’t care about men,” Alex shrugs and wipes her hands before accepting the knife in her palm.
“Chicks, then?” Melissa laughs nervously, and Alex blushes. “Same.”
“Oh, seriously?” Melissa shudders at the hopeful tone; she makes her grab the knife tighter, hitting her shoulder with the leaflet.
“Hush, you’re going to drop it.”
She tries to do it right, a laid-back teacher who isn’t going to harm her, with the knife or otherwise. Yet, Alex is so clumsy and too cute, and when they depart from the park, she doesn't get her to do a complete blade party trick.
But she got her address now. With a surname attached to it.
“Fuck.”
***
In her wildest fantasies, she tells Alex the truth.
It is not tender, even when daydreaming she is not a tactful woman, and cannot spill the team’s beans without putting a target on their backs.
She thinks she would crack a joke about it.
Honey, birds, plants, and frogs; she might need some work on that, but there’s poetry in this serendipity. Melissa, finch, only edible stuff they had for months that wasn’t another human, and the research that deprived her mom of her life.
Hilarious, truly.
Then, there are their names. Of war and defender, according to some baby-name books.
She doesn’t have any quips for that.
She goes back for the obvious. Flowers, sex organs of plants. Some of them bisexual, which are called perfect in older terminology; Melissa could joke about it, too.
She wanders around the city, catching sight of those precious bouquets sold in stores, tiny bright buttons found growing in spite of the asphalt, the aromatics dried up petals adorning vases in fine establishments, or just perpetually dying in restaurants at the center of the tables.
She collects some specimens, her own special bouquet, full of the representative twelve big families and some genus pertinent to Alex’s final thesis, an exploration of the nutritional value of crops native to the American soil, which were supplanted by European crops.
The ensemble is a bit odd, a disarray of leaves, twigs, and flowers, and in the center is a mini cake, not a cake, not a cupcake, a tiny cake of half the usual weight adorned simply in golden and greens. Not Melissa's best work, but it would make for the celebratory picnic, it is Alex's last barrier before graduating.
Kelly isn’t a friend of the family, the one that Alex doesn’t have complete because of them; she isn’t one of the youngsters full of knowledge and optimism, still, having preferred to keep her hands busy and her body fit, ready to bolt. She isn’t invited to many of the parties that are made in her honor, but Melissa was still bold enough to ask for the afternoon afterwards, just a sweet reunion when they met.
And then, she’d leave, refusing to trump her life any further.
Melissa waits up, the sun high and then low, mocking her soft heart even when she threatens it between her pacing. People stare, a strange feeling when she actually donned clean clothes and left the baseball cap at her apartment. The basket holding the flowers, herbs, and a variety of other plants starts to look as defeated as she feels; the cake would be sweating if it weren’t for the chill breeze. She almost considers leaving without seeing her, more dramatic, more mysterious, but she has never been that type of person.
She doesn’t contemplate what type of person would like to tie loose so messily instead of coming clean. Just that Kelly would like to end things nicely, smoothly, on a good note, like another fluke of anecdotes for the upcoming bright decades that surely Alex can enjoy with someone normal.
Her resolve vanishes when she sees her running across the park, bright eyes, cheery voice, screaming the name she gave to her, as it is the only breath she needs to close the distance.
And Melissa cheers with her, hugging her so tightly they choke on laughter, a lot of congratulations are exchanged, Alex shares the funny bits, and all the anxiety she was in these days. She talks, and talks, and Melissa stares, enamored by the stream of words until Alex draws breath and looks at the picnic basket garden.
“Are these…for me? You’re so silly, I love it!” She squeals, already recognizing the plants by species and genus.
“Uhm, yeah, and some cake,” Melissa goes to reach for it, and then it dawns on her. She didn't bring anything to eat the cake. “You can take it whole…”
“Nonsense, let me—” Alex stretches her hand into Melissa’s jacket, somehow finding the knife without any assistance or shame. “Half and half?” She beams at Kelly, her cheeks a healthy pink, her eyes shining, slightly out of breath, and expecting some confirmation from her.
Melissa leans into the shared space, slow, intense, inspecting those eyes to find some discomfort, some signal for her to stop, some reason for her to remind herself she shouldn’t do this.
Though not for nothing, love is meant to be something you fall into.
Their lips met, soft and impossible sweet and so wrong. Alex gasps into the kiss, and Melissa catches her lower lip before she can back off; she presses into the gesture, making it tender and purposeful as she knows she is not.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t…” she starts to whisper into Alex’s lips, and as an answer, she is kissed back, enthusiastic and shy as only someone so vibrant as Alex can be.
They eat the cake in the park, indeed cutting it with Melissa’s blade, insufficiently cleaned on their way back to Kelly’s apartment.
***
Melissa cannot say it was intuition; the writing was on the wall, and she was never safe. She just chose not to take notice of the news, of a man hanged over a satanic symbol, of a cult with hunts, burials, and false stag gods, of a junkie dead on the same grounds with a bygone infamous group of ladies.
Kelly sends the tape, as she is advised, and goes back to carry the butterfly knife, kept in the toolbox in her family's house.
Alex did have the intuition to read into this old habit coming back. But failed to act fast enough, such is the blindfold Melissa weaved over her eyes for years.
And now the blade presses on Alex’s neck, Melissa crying out the truth after a ghost of her worst decisions comes back. She could try to bargain, to explain, to justify herself from the fake name to the realization of why Alex is an orphan with a penchant for biology.
But she does not.
Melissa just kisses her skin, with her lips near those beautiful eyes that possess glimpses of a better life within their gaze, and with the knife as she rushes to promise how Kelly will come back just as soon as she deals with Melissa’s messy ex.
She runs away, not looking back, fearing she would not have the courage, as she never did in these long years she kept the truth from Alex. She completely misses the bright blood spilling out of her on her way out.